The Hunted - La preda

Although it would be easy to write The Hunted off as a simple chase film (I can see the pitch now: "It's First Blood married to Predator with a dose of The Fugitive", and in reality that is a pretty fair description) but it's straight forward manner lends a constant sense of urgency. Throughout this gory (yeah it's pretty graphic) cat and mouse thriller we are also given some real insight into Del Toro's character. Unwilling to make sweeping judgments about nearly any of the characters (Connie Nielsen's FBI agent is a bit stubborn and single minded and occasionally very careless in discharging her firearm in public, Tommy Lee Jones'survivalist trainer has a guilty conscious of his own and even Del Toro's transformation is understandable), the finale is exciting but emotionally complicated, even tragic. The camera work and editing are very effective and affective while not overwhelming the finished product with the typical Hollywood style over substance dilemma. Combined with some very strong performances by the leads THE HUNTED makes for a very intense and satisfying thriller experience.

I too don't understand the negative comments here. The Hunted is a great action flick. It features great leads from Tommy Lee Jones (as you would expect) and Benicio Del Toro (my first film experience with him, I thought he added an amazing presence to his character) plus good support from the surrounding cast. The film has some amazing locations and scenery and was very well paced. The fight and actions scenes were excellent with some decent gore thrown in where necessary. My only nit pick was I felt it could have been a little longer in duration. Ignore the bad press on The Hunted. I just don't understand how you can't enjoy this film - that simple! Oh,..and doesn't Tommy Lee Jones really suit the beard.

This is one of those movies that people will either love or hate. It has it's flaws for sure, but this movie speaks to primitive, macho mano-a-mano movie lovers.

How realistic the knife fights are in this movie remains to be seen, although kali, the martial art used as the base for the fight scenes, is a powerful fighting style. But they are exciting to watch, and both Jones and del Toro inhabit their characters with enough gusto and panache that the movie can be very enjoyable to watch.

It definitely won't be everyone's cup of tea, but the Hunted will make lots of action movie and martial arts movie fans pleased and satisfied.

The movie is pretty well-produced overall, though there are a couple of glaring editing goof-ups (the knife being dunked into water, for example.) And the fact that it's clear Jones and Del Toro are doing much of their own stuntwork in the fighting sequences (and other places) is pretty impressive.

However, there is really nothing of substance here that will make you remember the movie long after you've seen it. While the action gets bloody at times, the actual struggling around is only okay at best. The Jones and Del Toro characters are thin, with little background revealed about them, and they don't have that much dialogue. There are some interesting themes that start to peek out, but they are simply not expanded on. (Like: Why didn't Jones' character answer those letters he got? You have to hear the explanation from director Friedkin on one of the DVD documentaries!) Ultimately, the movie becomes a simple-minded action movie, of the mentality of many direct-to-video movies.

A P.S. to Hollywood filmmakers: If it is heavily snowing in British Columbia, it is HIGHLY UNLIKELY that at the same time it would be sunny and warm in Oregon! The weather patterns in both places are more or less the same!

Hey, out there. You guys who slammed this in your reviews, did you see the same film I did? Not real? Improbable? Impossible? Huh. If those of you who found this thought-provoking film about two men on the edge of the social plane, one who is over the edge and the other given the task of hunting the first one down-- both men, socially disaffected and on their own, unbelievable and impossible, give some attention to Alston Chase's article in the June, 200, pp.41-65 of the Atlantic Monthly on Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber and the effects of his experiences being part of the ill-conceived and unethical study on human subjects during his undergraduate years there. The formula is simple: Take a bright, talented person who is teetering on the edge of emotional stability, fill them with lots of head stuff about social and environmental corruption, train in the technology of killing people and then, turn them loose. While no one wanted to turn Kaczynski into the unabomber, the circumstances, however well-intended, did. The film story of Aaron Hallum played by the competent Benicio Del Toro and his counterpart, L.T. Bonham, played by Tommy Lee Jones, bring this theme into clear focus. OK, if you are a shoot'em up thriller fan (as I self-confessedly admit to being), you might have missed the car chase, the sex and all that, but gang, it is a gripping and thought-provoking story. Not real? I submit, read the data on Columbine, The Minn Indian Res and the Unabomber and guess again. It's real. Damn real.